Bulgarian school children sang songs to keep warm in the bitter cold. Bosnians drove hours to snap up electric heaters. And in Serbia, millions woke up to the Eastern Orthodox Christmas under the threat of winter hardship.

James Paffhausen, a 49-year-old Chicago native who was baptized in the Episcopal Church, went from being an abbot to being metropolitan of one of the most prominent U.S. branches of the global Orthodox Christian communion in less than two weeks.